GRABBINGSAND

sssh. it’s a secret. and it’s a good one. the thinkblank secret santa is back for another year of yuletide cheer.

i participated last year, and i’m doing it again this year. and if you’re a bit skeptical, i can testify that it does work. you give a gift, you get a gift. you make some stranger happy, some stranger makes you happy. (that didn’t sound right at all…)

so what are you waiting for? go get your ho-ho on!

so i’ve sort of been playing sims online. sort of. i’m one of the beta testers, actually, so i am not having to throw any money at the endeavor. and i am not sure i would play if i had to pay. despite all of the hype and the cover story in this week’s newsweek, and despite all of the evident hard work that has gone into this bit of software, the game appeals to me no more than did the original.

with the original, you had your sim (or sims), you had a patch of green grass and a small bankroll to build a home, buy some furniture and provide that sim (or sims) with the means to pursue a certain amount of narrow-minded a.i. happiness. in other words, you had to strive to ensure that this little computer person had all of the things that you were already trying to attain in real life. the fascination lasts for about a week if you are playing occasionally, a few minutes a day or so. and while i know some people really loved it, i found myself becoming bored around the eighth day. it’s at that point that you start wondering just what would happen if you led a sim into a long dead-end hallway then removed the only way out — kind of a small scale house of leaves experience. or perhaps you’d build your sim a swimming pool, watch them dive merrily in, then remove the ladders. but to be honest, you really didn’t have to actively torment the little bastards, because they would usually have some manner of cooking incident that would decimate half of their house and often leave them emoliated like a tibetan monk.

now we are in the middle of the interactive internet-based online age, so the sims have entered the fray with a multi-player edition of what has become the top-selling pc-based game in recent history. the situation is similar to the first outing. you start of with a sim — you can have three different ones, but only one in-play at a time. you have some customization options with your sim’s appearance, so you probably won’t run into yourself too often. the sim has some cash, but not too much. and here is where it diverts, as now you have to decide where to live on a macro scale. huge cities of sims (but not simcities) are gridded into plots of land that you can purchase, and prices are based on location (location, location). off in the woods? $2000. right on the beach? $16000. so you could just start off by grabbing some land and building just as you did before, but let’s not forget the online element of the game. other sims are there in that city, each one propelled by another desk-riding broadband jockey just like you. and they’ve already established homes and other facilities, so if they are online, then you can just go right on over and visit. and you can eat their food, play with their stuff, use their shower, sleep in their bed. virtual freeloading. the built-in chat client gives it kind of a high-end old school AOL feel, but then you have the other interactions from the first game that allow you to express the true inner feelings of your sim with a hug, an insult, a joke, a handshake or maybe a slap in the teeth. but it’s not too long before you realize just what everyone in the game has in mind. care to make a guess? nope, not that. sims online must still appeal to a family audience, you know, despite the expected M-rating when it is released. no, these sims are all slaves to the almighty dollar. you have to make money to get more things with which you can make more money. money is everything. one of the new furnishings for the modern online sim is a tip jar. the average consumer probably won’t notice the financial subtext of this game at first, but one morning they will be sitting at their pc, hearing the morning birds outside their window announcing that it’s 4am, and they will find themselves suddenly stunned that they’ve been making virtual pizzas for virtual money for the last seven actual hours…

this happens with so many online games. everquest is no different. they don’t call it evercrack for nothing. sure, you get into the game for the adventure aspect, perhaps even to develop and hone a character of your very own, maybe even to just have fun, but it eventually becomes just a matter of financial endeavor. you could be out slaying beasties, but instead you stay in a virtual town at a virtual kiln making virtual items to sell for virtual money to buy virtual stuff that might help you slay more virtual beasties. or if you didn’t have the patience, you could always hop online in the realworld and pay real money for virtual items. don’t believe me? well, you can’t sell such things anymore, but people will be happy to take your real money in exchange for money-making tips that just can’t lose.

spam for a virtual world.

it’s been a busy seven or so days, so let’s hit what we can, shall we? let’s see if i can catch up with myself.

movies. the 4-dvd release of fellowship of the ring is simply fantastic. this is what the dvd medium is supposed to be. this is the first time in a long time that i’ve had that strong and mighty desire to actually get involved in this creative process, because that is what a well made behind-the-scenes collection should do. the commentary is informative and humorous and very sincere, as everyone involved with this picture was in it for the love of the book. the documentaries show you just how epic this task was. how epic it still is… because this is only the first of three. and the extended cut of the movie? oh. it’s good. and if you’ve seen the movie in the theatre, you really haven’t seen the entireity of peter jackson’s vision. or is it tolkien’s vision via jackson? regardless, the additions and restorations of even seconds-long cuts of scenes, they are amazing. and perfect. not the least bit obtrusive. ahh. sigh. wanna go live in the shire now…

bond. jesus h. bond. the new double-0 flick is everything the press is saying it is. i was lucky enough to see it on tuesday night and it is everything that the last bond wasn’t, and that’s a really positive thing. i would even see that it is better than the next-to-last bond, and perhaps better still than any bond movie starring roger moore. i mean, the distinquished moore was well and good when i was a little kid and only cared about the gadgets, but brosnan is the real deal. he is connery in his prime, yet his rendition of the character is entirely his own and entirely fitting to the role. a bond with pride, honor, wit and more than a few weaknesses. and the action? ah, yeah. this is what else has been missing. car chases on frozen tundra. sword fights, two of them. snowmobiles, hovercrafts and surfboards, oh my!

my dsl is back up and running. a minor victory, but a victory none-the-less.

the new job is good. really good.

and tonight? a date with janeane garofalo at the tabernacle. okay. not really a date, but to many of my male friends she is epitome of the ultimate cool girlfriend. smart, cute, witty and takes little or no crap from anyone. did i already mention cute?

the leonids are back. if you see only one meteor shower this year, this is the one, though you’re going to have to break out the thermos and a pair of long underwear this time around.

a year ago, i drove up to ballground, georgia (about 25 miles north of Marietta on I-575) will bill and hans. avoiding curious local cops and the occasional reckless driver, we settled on a spot somewhere between not-really-anywhere and pretty-much-nowhere and pulled the car to the grass-and-gravel curb. they were everywhere, these flitting spots of reflected light. rarely would they be directly in your field of view, but rather to the periphery. you’d catch them out of the corner of your eye. and we were lucky, because for all of the seeming cold and late hour, it really wasn’t all that chilly and the next day wasn’t all that painful.

this time, the leonids are again giving the convenience of the hour to mainland europe. a lucky londoner will be able to turn up his gaze around 11pm and get an eyeful of cosmic entertainment. and what do we get? you can check for your self here, but atlanta’s best time for viewing will be somewhere around 5:22am. that’s AM. with an A. (shudder.) and it’s much colder this year than last.

but is it worth it? that’s up to you. even with the early hour, this will be the best opportunity to see the pretty debris for tens of years. and if you’ve never seen shooting stars at a rate of three or four a minute, you should. after all, the cosmos doesn’t put on a floor show just everyday…

“i am neither dead nor married, simply negligent and busy.” *

but things are looking up and turning toward the better. employment will do that for a person. and i am heading home for the weekend, so i expect to bring back some proof-of-autumn images. perhaps a handful or two. i mean, holidays and reunions aside, this is the loveliest season of them all, yes?

that’s what you do when you move. you evaluate, you decide, you cull, and the surviving effects end up in labelled boxes. books. dvds. kitchen. on and on, until eventually you give up on specificity and items find themselves in bins called “just stuff” or “junk drawer” — after all, it belongs to you, so surely you’ll remember where you put your favorite [fill-in-the-blank], right?

it never fails to be unsettling, this moving experience. you never can pick up from one place and start again in another. it must interrupt your flow of life. there is no way around it, and that is actually healthy. if you walked out of one location only to find everything you owned and needed ready at another, where is the learning? what do you gain? how do you grow? because this is a chance to start over, to literally shake the dust off of your life and take another look at the staid things to which you’ve grown accustomed.

a lack of communication kept me away for a few days. sorry about that. election day came and went and the republicans somehow managed to storm every available gate in georgia. yes, i voted. no, not many of my candidates won. am i feeling like a bruised liberal? no, but i’m certainly leary of this shift of power. regime change is never pretty.

okay. time to get back to work. there are boxes to unpack full of books to organize on the shelves that i must rebuild in the new area i’ve never used, but the sunshine is filtering in nicely through the blinds…